24

Helen woke from her doze with a start. Her neck, stiff after falling asleep in the least comfortable chair known to man, sent a sharp jolt of protest through the muscles at the base of her skull as she jerked her head around to check on her patient.

“Sorry,” Lee mumbled with a grimace as he reached for his injured thigh. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

Helen lurched forward, grabbing the Bible in her lap at the last second before it slid to the floor. Carefully, she set the book next to a glass of water on the small table near the head of the bed, then stood and checked his injury. “Is it paining you?”

What a stupid question. He had a hole in his thigh. Of course it was paining him.

“Not too bad.” He glanced at her, a guilty, little-boy-caught-red-handed look on his face. “Until I try to move.”

“Well, don’t move then,” she scolded.

Good grief. She’d finally found a man she wanted to impress, and here she was dousing him with vinegar instead of honey.

He chuckled, though, and the sound muted her self-recriminations. Perhaps this one actually preferred tart to sweet. What a boon that would be. Tart was her specialty.

Lee shifted a bit on the mattress. “I . . . uh . . .”—his gaze dodged hers—“got to make use . . . of the chamber pot.”

“Oh!” Helen snapped upright. “Um . . . do you . . . need help?”

She and Claire had cut away his denims to make sure there weren’t any hidden wounds, so all he wore were his drawers. The quilt covered his lower extremities, though, exposing only his thigh so she could change the bandage or apply a new poultice.

Still, the man was injured. He needed a nurse, not a shy female nervous about seeing a man in his underclothes. If he required assistance, she’d do what needed to be done.

Just as she stiffened her spine, he cleared his throat and rubbed his mustache. “If you can help me sit up and swing around a little so my legs hang off the bed, I should be able to . . . handle the rest on my own.”

Oh, thank heavens.

“Here.” She slid a supporting arm behind his back as he started to lift away from the pillow. He winced and hissed in a breath but made no other sound.

She leaned in close for better leverage, and her cheek pressed against his temple.

Cool. His head was blessedly, wonderfully cool.

Helen smiled and sent a heartfelt thank you heavenward.

Lee’s hair might be sweat-slicked from battling fever, his jaw thick with stubble, and his personal aroma drifting toward sour milk thanks to the poultice mixture she’d dribbled on him over and over, but he was still the best thing she’d ever had the pleasure of holding in her arms.

The worst had passed. Her man was on the mend.

Her man? Listen to her putting the cart before the horse. He barely knew her. His only truly conscious moments had occurred when she’d been in her black crow’s dress, or now, when she was so weary from tending him that her eyes surely sported dark circles and bloodshot streaks. Not exactly her most attractive moments.

Still, she couldn’t stop the possessiveness from swelling inside her as she held him close and gently scooted his injured leg to the side of the bed. As he shifted with her, his good leg jostled the bedside table. Already unsteady due to age and uneven legs, the table wobbled. Fearing the half-full glass of water would spill on Lee’s Bible, Helen made a grab for the glass with her free hand. She caught the glass, but in her haste, her forearm knocked the very item she’d been trying to save to the floor.

“Oh! I’m so sorry.” She gently extricated her arm from his injured leg and bent to retrieve the fallen book.

“Don’t worry about it,” Lee grunted as he braced his arms against the cot’s frame. He huffed out a heavy breath. “That Bible’s seen worse and survived. A little tumble won’t hurt it.”

Helen still felt bad about it, though. The book had landed open—spine up, pages down. The pages had been pushed under and bent at the corners. She dusted off the cover with her sleeve then set about unfolding the worst of the bent pages. Most had been squished in a large chunk, so they unbent easily, but the pages at the front sported more definite creases. As she smoothed one of the front pages, she noticed the handwriting at the top of the page. To Lee, with love. Rachel. Her hand slowed and a smile began to build. No wonder this Bible was so important to him. It had been a gift from his sister.

She scanned the rest of the page as her hand moved down the genealogy list. As her fingers passed over the top line of record, however, her smile vanished. Her chest throbbed as if an unseen band had suddenly compressed her ribs.

“Lee? What is this?” She held the opened page in front of him then slowly turned her face toward his.

His breath came in heavy pants and his face looked ashy beneath his scruff of a beard, but for the first time in a long while, his health was a secondary concern. She needed an answer. And she needed it now.

“Right here.” She pointed to the top line of the family record.

His forehead scrunched, and his green eyes regarded her with confusion as he tilted his head back to look at her. “My name. Why?”

“Because if that is your name, my friend is in an awful lot of trouble.”

Helen’s trembling fingers traced the name scripted in Rachel’s handwriting.

Elliott Leander Dunbar.

She clenched her hand into a fist and scowled at the man who had made her mind go soft, who had made her forget where her true loyalties resided. “Tell me what you know about Grace Mallory,” she demanded as she flung the Bible away from her and onto the bed. “Now!”

Grace swallowed as Detective Dunbar stared down at her. For a fleeting moment, she considered making a run for the door, to find shelter among the throng of ladies just a few yards away, but the Pinkerton stood too close. She’d never make it. And if she bolted, he’d be certain of her suspicions and would never trust the books in the crate. Better to play along. Act as if she weren’t scared out of her wits to be alone with him.

Using her indignation over his siege of her office to mask her fear, Grace scowled up at him. “This is highly irregular, detective. I’ll have to report this incident to the Western Union home office.”

“Do what you gotta do, lady. What I’ve gotta do is complete my mission and get those documents back to Whitmore. I’ve wasted enough time in this petticoat prison already.” Dunbar grasped the lip of the wooden crate’s lid, and with a single yank, pulled the small nails from their moorings and ripped the cover away.

Grace flinched at the raw display of strength but held her ground. When he turned the crate upside down and dumped the nearly two dozen books onto her work table, she lurched forward and grabbed his arm.

“Be careful! You’ll damage my—”

“Your daddy’s books will survive.” He shook her fingers from his arm with a light flick of his elbow, like a horse shooing an annoying fly with its tail. “Leave me be.”

She’d been about to warn him against damaging her equipment, not the books, being more concerned about the telegraph machinery than the random volumes of poetry and prose that held no sentimental value to her whatsoever. Thankfully, his rude interruption kept her from exposing herself.

He tossed books left and right, obviously looking for specific titles. Apparently, he didn’t just know there were books missing from Tremont Haversham’s library, he knew which books.

The knot in her belly tightened a notch.

He checked the spine of a thick, red, cloth-covered book then gave a little grunt of satisfaction before tucking it under his arm. Judging by the size of the book, it must have been Oliver Twist. Two tossed-aside books later, he latched onto a dark green hardback with a gilt title line that blazed Guy Mannering in bold fashion.

Grace took a single step back, anxious to put some space between her and the large man siphoning all the air out of her tiny office space. He had the books, now she just needed to get him to leave. “I searched my father’s collection for the documents after he died,” she told him, thankful that her voice sounded relatively steady, “but I never found them. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”

Please take them and go.

But the detective appeared to be in no hurry. He started examining the covers, the spines. Flipped through the pages.

Not here! Don’t look for them here. She needed to get him out of her office. Out of the town.

“Those books have caused me no end of grief,” she blurted. “Just take them back to Agent Whitmore. The two of you can tear them apart for all I care. I never want to see them again.”

Please leave. Please leave.

He paused and stared at her, his icy gaze freezing her from the inside. Then he brought up his left leg and planted his boot on the seat of her office chair, making a table out of his knee. He set the books on his thigh, opened the top cover, and ran his fingers over the inside panel. He closed Oliver Twist, shuffled it to the bottom, then performed the same procedure on Guy Mannering.

What was he doing? Grace’s pulse raced as her eyes followed his every movement. He looked like he was feeling for something. The seal? But how would he have known about it? It was the one weak spot in her plan she could do nothing about—the Haversham seal embossed inside each book. If the Pinkerton knew about it, then . . .

Dunbar turned his face to her and smiled, a cat-with-bird-feathers-hanging-from-its-mouth kind of smile.

“I knew you were a clever one,” he purred as he dropped his foot back to the ground and stalked toward her. “Had to be to elude me for so long.”

Grace retreated a step. Dunbar advanced. She withdrew farther, until the backs of her knees bumped into the blue-striped chair.

“I thought you’d trust a Pinkerton, but somehow you saw through me, didn’t you?”

He knew!

Grace didn’t wait to see how much. She ran. But the counter’s half door slowed her down. As she fumbled to pull it open, Dunbar’s arm snaked around her waist and his hand slammed over her mouth.

She kicked and flailed, but he only chuckled. “A fighter. Good. I like a good tussle. Gets the blood flowing.”

Grace tried to scream, but his large palm smothered all but a tiny, muffled squeak. If only she could reach her derringer! The thought had her clawing at her skirt, but his hold kept her from bending at the middle, leaving her sole source of protection out of reach.

He toted her like a rag doll to the window and, holding her away from view, peered out, his smile growing wider at whatever he saw. “Everyone’s nice and occupied with those crazy contraptions Bledsoe was good enough to order. Getting out your bedroom window unseen will be easier than shooting a deer with a broken leg. No one will even know we’ve gone.”

No! Grace squirmed and shimmied, desperate to get away, but his arms circled her like iron bands.

“Yep, your little ruse almost worked,” he said, his voice conversational and not the least bit winded as he toed a fallen book out of his path and dragged her through the doorway into her private rooms. “Too bad Chauncey told me about the stamp his father used on the inside covers of his books. A seal embossed with his initials. Neither of those books had one.”

Grace stilled. Chauncey? As in Chaucer Haversham?

Dunbar wasn’t just working for him. They were friends. Longstanding friends, by the sound of it.

She should have joined Amos and the rest of the town ladies when she’d had the chance.

Dunbar braced a hip on her windowsill then wrapped a long leg around both of hers to free a hand for raising the window. While he shoved the window to its maximum height, she fought the only way she could, scratching at his face. One nail drew blood. He cursed then slammed his forehead hard against her skull. She went lax. Silver diamonds winked in her vision.

“Do that again, Grace, and I’ll take my knife to you. See how much you like having your face slit open. Not even Bledsoe would have you then.”

He bent his big frame around her much smaller one, and while she was too disoriented to slow him down, he ducked through the window and exited into the open field behind the telegraph office. A field completely hidden from the rest of Harper’s Station.